


shoot him again 'cause i can see his soul dancing

by franticallywhisperedstories



Category: Ghostbusters (Movies 1984-1989), Ghostbusters - All Media Types, The Real Ghostbusters
Genre: (not necessarily in that order), Angst, Anxiety, Blood, Death, Egon Needs Many Hugs, Gen, Team as Family, Undeath
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-13
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-10-03 21:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10259051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/franticallywhisperedstories/pseuds/franticallywhisperedstories
Summary: Carefully, he pencils in a heading:Class Nine.After a moment’s hesitation, slow like he can delay this truth, this undeniable conclusion based on all feasible evidence, he writes below it,Egon Spengler.(or, egon struggles with death and everything that comes after)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shelbythez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shelbythez/gifts).



> Dedicated to Shelby. Congrats on getting an AO3 account, you dweeb.

When Egon Spengler was eight years old, he formed a list of ideal conditions for his death. It wasn’t very long, but he put a lot of thought into it. Everyone died, after all, so why couldn’t he do it on his own terms?

First on the list was that he wanted to die with the sun on his face. He wanted rising serotonin levels and just a little more warmth than normal and orange spreading over the backs of his eyelids when he closed them for the last time. He figured that it wasn’t too much to ask. If he, like seventy percent of Americans, died in a hospital, they could perhaps open the blinds. Surely they opened the blinds for you, when you were dying.

Second was that he wanted to die with his favorite book in his hands. This was a little less realistic, but still doable. He made it very clear in the list exactly what his favorite book was so there would be no confusion about this portion. There was a good chance that he wouldn’t be able to give directions himself, so he had everything very nicely laid out. He had to be eighteen before he could make a will, but this was the next best thing. For a while, he kept the note folded up and just poking out of his breast pocket, but his mother told him that she couldn’t bear to look at it any longer, so he left it at home. It was just as well; he had it memorized anyways.

Third was that he did not want to die alone.

Here, in the cellar of the Morris-Jumel mansion, so dark that he can’t see the broadsword dug hilt-deep in his side, with _The Infinitive of Go_ by John Brunner safe on his nightstand at the firehouse and nobody even close enough to hear him cry out, he thinks that the Universe never did him any favors, and there’s really no reason he should have expected it to now.

Instead, he curls his hands into nail-scarred fists and prays that none of the other Ghostbusters have to be the ones who find him here.

* * *

 

Egon always thought of himself as a man humbled by logic, but even pure, objective fact can befall human psyche on occasion.

In other words, despite every ghost he’s ever fought, he never truly believed there was anything after death. Maybe afterlife is only something for those who aren’t quite human anymore, a parade of malevolent beings, easily classified. Dripping ectoplasm and searching for some foggy revenge that they can no longer recall.

He finds himself in line. Everything aches, from the tips of his nerve-damaged fingers to the gaping hole in his side, but at least it all aches equally. He grapples with consciousness, searching for a single clear thought, but comes up empty. He shuffles forward when everyone else does, crying children and men with tight, gaunt faces. He closes his eyes and white light, all in a terrific stream, doors shutting and the click of a lock, his head hurts so much, he feels like someone just-awoken and trying to place a dream rapidly slipping.

He doesn’t know how long it takes, but he does get to the front, which surprises him. He didn’t think there was a front. He didn’t think there was anything to wait for.

The woman towards the front, indistinguishable from the others besides from the direction she was facing, takes one look at him and says, “No. Absolutely not.”

“Excuse me?” Egon says. He feels, distantly, like he should be fighting, his fingers are still fists, he doesn’t remember what he’s fighting for.

“I’m not letting you through with that thing on your back.”

He glances over his shoulder, startled to find that there is indeed something on his back. Some kind of device with slow-blinking lights and holstered guns. He tries to pull it off, but it doesn’t budge.

“I’m sorry,” he says. The words taste burnt.

“We have a lot of rules here,” she says. “That breaks almost all of them.”

“I can’t get it off,” he says, and then tries another, “I’m sorry.”

“Well, that isn’t my problem, is it?” she says. “You’re not getting through. Next!”

He opens his mouth to protest, but a burly man with blood almost all over his face elbows him out of the way and Egon finds himself standing a little off to the side of the line. He watches the others pass through. A man in a business suit with shaking hands. A woman with a scarf wrapped around her bald head. A toddler rocking back on his heels, looking absurdly professional.

No one else is detained. No one else is even given a second glance.

Maybe he can go back to the end of the line. It feels like people are joining it quicker than they could possibly be crossing the invisible boundary beyond the woman, but the line never seems to get any shorter or longer. He could try his luck again.

He walks back. With every step, the floor lengthens beneath his feet, rubbery. The people waiting turn unanimously, watching him. Their unwavering gazes make him nervous.

This must be a terrible idea. The closer he gets to the end, if there even is an end, the more everything hurts. He has to kneel down every once in a while, press a hand to his side and focus his gasping breaths into something a little more sustainable. Lights swim across his vision. Oh God it hurts, it _hurts_ , no one is coming for him, no one is even looking at him, this can’t be it, the pain’s too bad for it to be the real end.

He collapses, scratching at his eyes, his cheeks. He wants to peel off all this screaming skin and start again. He wants to rip his heart out of his chest until it stammers out a painful rhythm. He wants to gouge out his eyes, his useless brain, everything he used to treasure. The glasses he didn’t even notice slip off the bridge of his nose and crack right across the middle. He blindly scoops them up and cradles them to his chest. A sob rises in his throat and he tears at the machine on his back but it doesn’t come off. He wants it _off_. He wants it to end.

It doesn’t end. Not quite yet.

* * *

 

He comes to lucidity slowly, as if following an instruction manual. He remembers the pain clearest, but as he realizes that most of it has evaporated, other things come into focus.

He lost too much blood and fell into some sort of fever dream, or hallucinated, or something. His brain was convinced that he was dead so it created its own evidence. Brains do that. He hasn’t heard of afterlife hallucinations, per se, but he’s sure they exist.

He lifts his shirt carefully to examine the wound. With a jump of shock, he realizes that the blade is still buried in his bloodstained flesh. His trembling fingers still a few centimeters from its handle. Surely pulling it out will make it worse, and he doesn’t have any medical supplies and _no one’s coming for him._

He grasps the hilt and yanks before he can think better of it.

It doesn’t hurt at all. He doesn’t even feel it. The sight of his own blood coating the sword makes him feel sick and oh God, he’s going to faint. He buries his face in his knees and focuses on breathing. That doesn’t hurt either, although he distinctly remembers every inhale feeling like another stab.

He grasps his sweaty hair in his bloody fists and squeezes. He never thought that a lack of pain would make him panic. He chokes out a laugh, a short, terrified sound. The irony is awful. The room reeks. He dry-heaves onto the cold stone floor. He’s going to die here, isn’t he, if he hasn’t already. There’s no escaping it.

Okay, calm. Calm. If he had to guess, he’d say that it’s some sort of shock reaction that numbs pain. That sounds reasonable, scientific even. This means that he should avoid doing most of the things he’s doing right now, seeing as he’s lost his body’s best indicator that he’s damaging himself. Slowly, he drags himself back into a fetal position on the ground. Easy. Deep breaths.

Instinctively, he brushes the tips of his fingers against the wound. Maybe he should be compressing it right now. Winston would know. Winston has much more experience with this sort of thing.

He knows something is very, very wrong when his fingers come back clean and dry.

There’s so much blood on the wound. There’s no way none of it rubbed off. There are mental reactions, which can be suppressed, and then there are actual, physical reactions. Unless he’s hallucinating again, and hallucinations don’t typically come in the form of one small thing, his side is dry.

If the blood has dried (which has perhaps worse implications; how long must he have been here?) he should have felt it when he touched it. Dried blood has a very different feel from wet blood and even unharmed skin. He tries to pick at it with one fingernail. His hand scrapes clumsily through. No sensation whatsoever.

Okay. Deep breaths, Egon. This doesn’t necessarily mean what he thinks it means. His starved brain is jumping to theories, which is never an appropriate way to draw conclusions. He at least needs a hypothesis, a few concise tests, more research on his side and oh, he’s hyperventilating.

He stuffs his knuckles in his mouth and tries to stop himself from crying. Whatever happens, he’ll be all right. He’s resourceful and smart and he can fix this. He can fix anything.

He hears footsteps, dim on the ceiling above him. Someone is running. He clings to the sound. At least there’s something here. At this point, he’d be ecstatic to see even the malevolent Class Seven he was chasing before he- before waking up here.

Force against the door and a grunt. Someone banging with all the power they have. A pause and then a shout, “Egon! Eeeegooonnn!!!”

Carefully, he straightens his jumpsuit, tucks his arm against the wide stain on his side and forces himself into a sitting position. “Down here!” he shouts and for a moment he’s terrified that he can’t get loud enough, that Peter won’t hear him and will leave and he’ll be alone again, he can’t be alone, he’ll go crazy, and that isn’t a word he uses lightly.

The door swings open and slams against the wall. “Egon! Buddy, you okay?”

 _No, Christ no._ Egon twists his shaking hands into something not too indicative of his panic. “Sort of,” he manages, and from the sound of it, Peter’s taking the stairs three at a time.

He bursts into view and drops to Egon’s side. “Oh my god,” he says, barely controlling the worry that tinges his own voice. “Do we need to call the paramedics?”

Egon opens his mouth to say _yes, I think I’m dying, I hope I’m dying,_ but something stops him. “No,” he says and his voice is shaky, he hates how it betrays him. “I’m all right.”

“You have blood all over,” Peter says. “Christ, what happened?”

Egon’s brain feels far too sluggish. “It threw blood on me,” he says, and it’s such a pathetic lie. “I don’t- I’m not sure whose it was.”

“Christ,” Peter says again. “I’m so sorry, man. We started looking for you as soon as your walkie went out but we didn’t realize there was a downstairs-,”

“Peter,” Egon cuts him off. The two syllables are difficult to maneuver. “I’m all right. I don’t know where the ghost went, though.”

“Oh, we got it,” Peter says, waving a hand dismissively. “Bastard screwed with our friend. Didn’t stand a chance.”

Something in Egon swells at the words. “I suppose not,” he says. Peter helps him up the stairs and he ignores the fact that he isn’t limping at all and he does not check his pulse. Peter is looking at him and talking to him and touching him. They do things that defy physics every day. This shouldn’t be any different.

(Somewhere between late night and early morning back at the firehouse, Egon traces the wound from his bunk. It reaches from the soft spot above his hips to halfway through his ribcage.

He still doesn’t check his pulse.)

* * *

 

“No, no,” Winston says. “Tron isn’t a character. It’s a sentient security program.”

“With a love interest,” Ray says.

Winston waves a hand, narrowly missing his mug of coffee. “Everything has a love interest, man. It’s not a dealbreaker.”

“I didn’t say it was, I just think if something has an actor and another actor kisses that actor, it’s probably a character.”

Egon normally prides himself on his ability to follow Ray and Winston’s conversations, but there’s still a muted quality to nearly everything and his hands can’t stop shaking. He has to eat something, even though the sight of his toast makes him queasy. He hasn’t had anything for nearly fifteen hours and he’s fairly certain that somebody is about to shove a granola bar down his throat. (He’s long given up the pretense that his teammates don’t keep track of his eating habits).

If he’s human, he needs food. If he’s a ghost . . . well, he’s seen ghosts eat before. Some of them even seem to enjoy it. It isn’t much of a stretch to think that he could continue with meals.

He nibbles at a corner of the toast. It isn’t terrible, even though it’s long grown cold. There’s a distinct acidic quality, but it’s bearable and he’s willing to deal with it for the sensation of eating. There’s something remarkably human about absorbing vitamins and nutrients by putting things in your mouth and crushing them with the exposed portion of your skeleton. He’s glad that he can still do it.

Ray catches his eye. “You sure you’re okay, Egon?” No overwhelming concern, just pure, scientific curiosity.

“I’m quite all right,” he says. The blood on his side didn’t wash off in the shower but it hasn’t stained any of his other clothes, so he thinks he can hide it for a while. He pauses. “Thank you for asking.”

Winston smiles at him. “I don’t guess you wanna prove me right?”

It takes Egon a moment to remember what he’s talking about. “I’ve never seen _Tron._ ”

Winston chuckles. “Isn’t that a tragedy.” He nods. Swallowing feels difficult all of a sudden, like his saliva is heavier. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a few prototypes that I should be working on.”

Peter looks up abruptly from the newspaper. “Oh, uh, okay. Take your toast.”

Egon grabs the plate and walks to his lab as quickly as he can without arousing suspicion. He needs the lab right now, needs the comfort of whirring devices and so many dangerous things, but they’re dangerous in ways he understands.

He knows how every single thing in that lab ticks, and it’ll feel good to know again.

* * *

 

Ever since he was a child, he thought best in confined spaces. When his theories became a little too much for even him to comprehend, he would reach out and touch every wall to stabilize himself.

Now, he curls up underneath the lab table with the least radiation heaped on top of it. He’s been bordering on panicky for nearly a day and it’ll be so much better if he can just get a good handle on everything that’s been going on lately. He just needs to understand something. He can deal with any problem if he understands it.

He flips through his favorite notebook. It’s much rougher than any of the other books he keeps, filled with crossed-out scribbles and half-finished designs. This is where he records the things he discovers before he really grasps them, before the concepts are polished enough to go in another book.

He finds about ten pages devoted entirely to basic summaries of ghost classes. There are a lot of arrows showing places where he reclassified and changed his mind, which he did frequently. He almost always records things like that in pen, which is perhaps symbolic of his hubris. He doesn’t believe that he’ll change anything, but he usually does.

Right now, the highest classification is Class Seven. The page dedicated to those is rife with sketches and nearly unintelligible scribbles. He remembers their first Class Seven, how shaken he was. It was also the first spirit that truly harmed one of them. He created this page with an unsteady hand in a hospital waiting room. Sometimes, his notes falter in the middle of a sentence and don’t pick back up again.

Despite their lack of encounters with any higher classes, Egon has some idea of what they might be. Although Class Sevens are (hopefully) the top when it comes to power and malevolence, it would be possible to get a spirit that has the power to harm people without possession and even has a steady form of its own. He scratches out a note beneath the heading _Class Eight- a being of varying motivations that has a regular, humanoid form and considerable power in this form._

He pauses before turning the page. He isn’t just humanoid, he’s damn near human. He’s- he has no clue what he is. He’s unlike anything they’ve ever busted before.

Carefully, he pencils in a heading: _Class Nine._ After a moment’s hesitation, slow like he can delay this truth, this undeniable conclusion based on all feasible evidence, he writes below it, _Egon Spengler._

* * *

 

He tries to walk through a wall at nearly nine p.m. the following night. It seems like the sort of thing he should at least attempt. Now that he’s faced the evidence and formed a hypothesis, he needs a variety of tests before drawing conclusions.

If he ever lets himself draw conclusions, that is.

He regrets even having to write down the words, _For the first test, I tried to walk through a wall and Janine came up to make sure nobody was getting mugged._ It’s not exactly the most embarrassing experiment he’s conducted, and Janine knows better than to ask at this point, but it still isn’t a high point in his scientific career.

He tries again later when he’s considerably drunker and it works. Somehow, miraculously, he finds himself teetering between stairs on the other side of the lab and everything’s spinning, everything’s going exhaustingly fast. He didn’t want to be able to do this. He wanted to be able to write that he showed no symptoms of being a spirit other than a frozen wound and an empty pulse.

He sits on the steps and presses his cheek against the wall. It stays solid, thank God. He closes his eyes and pretends that this isn’t such a big deal. It’s fine, it’s fine. He’s all right with being dead, maybe, and being partially intangible sort of comes with the territory. He was expecting this.

He’s filled with an awful loneliness all at once. It hurts to even think about for too long so he retreats to the bathroom where he splashes his face with enough water to near fill the basin. He lets it trickle through his hair and trace the curve of his nose. He’s almost sober. Christ, he’s almost sober. He doesn’t know if he can handle this sober.

He hates his fucking brain sometimes. Hates the way it doesn’t stop, the way he can’t shut it down. He’s overwhelmed easily and his thoughts run so fast and so intense, it’s a wonder he doesn’t break down more often.

He slips downstairs and integrates himself into Peter and Ray’s conversation. He gets invested enough in the argument of whether spirit and ghost are two different terms that he almost forgets that he’s probably one or the other. He thinks they can probably see the faint quiver of his steps, hear the quiet slur of his words, but nobody says anything.

He has pretty amazing friends. Even on his worst days, he can admit that.

* * *

 

If intangibility needs to be instinctive, flying is the opposite. It takes intense concentration and a bit of guided meditation, but eventually he’s nearly three feet in the air and rising quickly. He panics at first, but then he gets a grip and it’s sort of okay. It’s not so bad, floating. He likes feeling weightless, like the things he does don’t have an impact on anyone so he can do whatever he wants. He can fight, he can die, he can pretend until he runs himself into the ground.

He hits the ceiling with a dull scrape of skin on plaster. He’s still pushing against it and he wonders what would happen if he just let himself float all the way up.

He’s always wanted to see the stars up close.

And then release, all at once, and he falls onto a table and breaks a microscope and falls to the floor. It doesn’t hurt because nothing hurts anymore, but it’s hard to be on the ground after flying. He picks bits of glass from his palms and rubs them between his fingers. One of them still has a little bit of ectoplasm on it from his last late-night analysis.

A knock on the door. “Egon?”

He swallows and rises to his feet. “Yes?”

He can see the doorknob turn but Ray doesn’t come in. “I heard a crash. Everything all right?”

He hates lying to them, hates how easy it’s become. “I’m fine, Ray.”

Ray gives a mumbled acquiescence and trudges back down the stairs. Egon stares at the cracked plaster above him and thinks that it couldn’t be farther from the truth.

* * *

 

Things sort of come in stages after that.

It becomes easier to change mass, change form. He hates most things about this godawful charade, but he likes his own flexibility. He always wanted to fly when he was a child. Everything weighed too much back then, like the mass of his surroundings chained him to the ground.

He eats less than he used to, and mostly when he’s with the others. Food becomes easier to choke down, too. He’s secretly relieved that, as supernatural skills become more natural, human skills aren’t getting harder. Maybe there’s still something living in him, just a few cells that continue to breathe.

Sleeping is the worst because, not only does he no longer require it, he physically can’t. His functions won’t shut off. He tries everything he can think of to no fruition.

After the fourth time Peter catches him in the lab far later than he should be and drags him back to bed, he starts lying down when the others do. It seems like it won’t be too hard to just relax for a bit, but it’s possibly the worst thing he can do, lying alone for eight hours with nothing but his thoughts, which tend to spin out of control when he leaves them alone for too long.

He learns how to tell when the others are really, truly, asleep, and then he sneaks back up to his lab. At least his fidgety hands have something to do up there. Something productive.

He tinkers with various other prototypes, but he always comes back to his notebook. Despite all he’s learned in the past few weeks, he’s reluctant to add anything more to the page, as if details will make it even more final than his own name staring up at him.

He needs some sort of solution to this. He can’t live this strange half-life forever, pretending he’s all right when his teammates ask and lying in bed for an hour before daring to get up. This isn’t going away anytime soon. Eventually, he’ll have to tell them. Oh God, he’ll have to tell them that he’s a ghostbusting ghost. He really isn’t looking forward to that.

He brews himself coffee that he won’t drink and watches the sun out the wide second-story windows. For now, it feels almost normal, and he’ll cling to it for as long as he’s able.

* * *

 

Since the disaster of a Class Seven bust, they’ve had a relatively slow month. Egon’s been dreading the first bust since- since that thing happened, so much that it’s almost a relief when it comes if it means he can stop worrying so much. He’s done this thousands of times, after all, and his physical capabilities have far from diminished since the incident. He’ll be all right. It’s just a Class Three. They could take care of it with their eyes closed.

He doesn’t really know what he’s afraid of. That the ghost will point a finger at him, hiss “He’s one of us?” or something?

Shit. Yes.

But that’s ridiculous, of course. Even if ghosts can sense each other- and they probably can- there’s no way anyone would believe anything a Class Three says. They surely trust Egon more than any old spirit. He can keep his cover a little longer.

He pulls the proton pack on and loosens the straps- he knows he shouldn’t, knows it’s dangerous to have even an inch of leeway, but he hates how it digs into his shoulders, hates how it compresses his chest and makes it difficult to breathe.

 _It saved your life,_ he reminds himself, but it didn’t, not really, because he doesn’t feel saved and he certainly doesn’t have a life anymore.

He pinches his skin- is it his imagination, or is it paler than usual? - and focuses on breathing.

Eventually, he climbs into the backseat of the Ecto-1 and damn, he loves this car, loves the smell of coffee and ectoplasm and the faint veneer of static electricity. Winston’s hand gripping the wheel and Ray and Peter arguing quietly about something just in front of him- either about something essential to their mission or about a reality TV show, Egon can never tell- and he feels at home with the people he loves for the first time in what feels like forever.

Peter briefs them on the way over. “Class Three wandering around the Flatiron Building. Shouldn’t be a huge deal. Owner wants us in and out as quickly as possible.”

Generally, this means that it’s going to be grueling and long and they’ll have to cause a lot of property damage, but Egon doesn’t say that. Instead, he stares out the window and wonders when they’re actually going to make the bingo page for frequently haunted buildings that Ray keeps talking about. The Flatiron Building would certainly make the cut.

They split up once they’re inside and Egon finds himself meandering through the halls, which are longer and darker than he remembers. His side twinges, and he places a cold hand over it. Sometimes he feels like the knife is still buried in there, like every time he looks down he’ll be met with rusty blood and iron.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

He closes his eyes for just a moment, bracing himself against the wall and very consciously staying solid. Almost immediately, he’s greeted with glowing blue eyes cutting through the darkness and a translucent hand reaching towards him. He jerks back and opens his eyes.

The hallway is empty.

So ghosts can sense other ghosts. That means that the Class Three can also sense him, and it’s just a matter of who gets there first.

He rounds the corner and there it is, watching him. It tilts its head and smiles, wide and manic through bloodstained teeth and it is so much like every being in that line in the shadowy, painful place that Egon thinks he’s going to be sick.

“Hello,” he says. “I suspect you’ve been looking for me.”

The spirit says nothing. Few of them talk, anyway. He doesn’t know what he’d been expecting.

And then multiple things happen at once.

First is that Egon pulls out his blaster and fires like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do. He squeezes the trigger until his knuckles turn white and the stream jets toward the spirit at an alarming pace.

Second is that the spirit moves easily backwards through the dirty wall Egon’s facing, watching him and the proton stream with nothing short of amusement.

Third is that he follows it, crashing through the wall with minimal effort and nearly losing his balance. He’s panting, the pack feels so much heavier than it ever has, and this was a really bad idea.

The spirit turns and starts to laugh. Egon’s leaning heavily against the wall that he’s no longer sure will support him, hair messy and sweat frozen in place in thin lines across his forehead.

It’s the most chilling sound he’s ever heard.

He’s almost crying, but he can’t quite manage it. The spirit laughs and laughs, watching him struggle- struggle to stay solid, stay grounded, stay _alive_ even just a little bit.

And then Winston bursts through a door Egon hadn’t even seen and roars a one-liner and traps the spirit in his stream, lightning and ash and blood suspended in frozen veins.

The spirit laughs all the way down into the trap. Egon’s the one to close the lid on it, but it doesn’t feel like a triumph, not when anxiety is gnawing its way into his throat and he hasn’t known what the fuck he _is_ for almost a month and he wants to say it so bad. It would be easy, theoretically, to open his mouth and say, _Winston, I don’t think I’m all human anymore._

He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t say anything. He scoops up the trap and listens to Winston speak to Ray and Peter over the walkie-talkies. It’s nearly all static. He meant to fix those, but he never got around to it.

On the way out, he reaches up and loosens the straps to his proton pack.

* * *

 

Peter, with all the gusto of their resident psychologist, declares that they need some real bonding time, so Egon finds himself curled up besides the disgusting sofa (he may not be in his best mindscape right now, but he will never, ever touch those cushions) sipping tea that’s really far too hot. The burn surprises him every time he raises the cup to his lips and it’s the first thing he’s tasted in so long that doesn’t make him ache.

Ray deals the cards because Winston is a fumbly shuffler and everyone knows that Peter cheats. Egon isn’t entirely sure what they’re playing, but he thinks he’s winning, if Peter’s muttered curses are anything to go by.

Egon can tell that it’s warm even though his body temperature has stayed constant since he died. He’s stupidly happy. The tea is cooling down, and it still tastes like tea.

Egon throws down three cards so that they fan out on the carpet (which is really only a little less disgusting than the sofa), and Winston groans. “How are you so good at this?” he says and Egon just grins because he still has no clue what the object of the game is and is now beginning to question if it even is a game or the others just making it up as they go along.

Ray collects the cards and shuffles them deftly. “Again?”

They play well into the night. Egon’s almost certain that they aren’t playing the same game each time, but someone always says, “Let’s play again!” at the end, so it’s hard to tell. He still wins most rounds.

Eventually, Ray stops mid-shuffle and turns to him. “Hey,” he says, discomfort clear in his eyes and weighing on his tone. “You know that you can, you know. Talk to us. If you want.”

“About anything,” Winston adds and oh Lord, this is an intervention. He should’ve known Peter would never let him win eight consecutive times.

He tries to smile and it ends up sort of like a grimace. “I appreciate the sentiment,” he says carefully, “but where is this coming from?”

“It’s not a big thing,” Peter says quickly. “You just- you haven’t been eating much and I hear you in your lab practically every night when you should be asleep.” He takes a deep breath. “And we just wanted to let you know that if- if something’s going on with you, we’re here. That’s all.”

“I’m sorry,” Egon says, trying to keep his face neutral, oh god he’s trying. “I wasn’t aware that I was keeping you up.” He knows it isn’t the right thing to say, but he’s never been good at platitudes and niceties and maneuvering out of tricky situations.

“We’re concerned about you,” Ray says, a little sharper, like he understands what Egon’s trying to do and he doesn’t approve. “Are you okay?”

He’s heard those words a lot in the past month and they always mean different things. The word _okay_ is such a fascinating one. It certainly can say a lot for so few letters.

“I’m fine,” he says. “Just a little stressed.”

“Is this because of the Class Seven throwing blood on you?” Winston asks. “Because that was freaky and it’s understandable if you’re scared.”

It takes him a moment to remember the story he told them at first, to explain away all the blood that coated every surface, oh Christ. “It was . . . startling,” he admits. “But I’m fine now.”

“You can tell us if you’re having nightmares again,” Peter says and the _again_ is like a slap in the face. Of course they knew, it’s a small room, a small firehouse. It doesn’t matter.

“I’m all right,” he says. “I’ve been having trouble sleeping and I’ve lost some of my appetite but-,” he cuts himself off, unsure how to end the sentence. He appears to be digging himself into an even deeper hole.

“But you’re all right,” Peter finishes. “Of course you are, because God forbid you _tell_ us when you aren’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Egon says and he doesn’t know what else there is to say. _I’ve been dead for weeks and no one’s going to save me. I don’t know anything about myself. I’m lost._

Winston places a soothing hand on Peter’s shoulder. “It’s okay, man,” he says. “Just take care of yourself. We hate seeing you like this.”

 _I hate putting you through this,_ Egon wants to say but he doesn’t because he’s a coward. “I will,” he says. “I swear.”

They play a few more halfhearted card games before heading up to bed. Egon curls in over his pillow and listens to the branches scratching outside the window, sharp like sobbing. He stays there the whole night. He doesn’t sleep, but maybe he comes close because his thoughts blur together and it isn’t so bad, under the covers like this. Hiding from the world.

He even pretends to sleep in the next morning, waiting until nearly everyone’s up to pull himself to his feet. He feels foolish doing so, like a child pretending to be asleep when his parents check in on him, but Peter smiles so wide when he sees him downstairs that it’s almost worth it.

Maybe he’ll have to burrow under the covers more in the early mornings.

* * *

 

Things go rather smoothly after he starts paying more attention to his friends paying attention to him. He eats frequently and even learns to like it again. He lies in bed for long hours, counting ceiling cracks and creaks of the old floors and everything in between. He tries to engage without thinking about how they’ll react when they inevitably find out.

He still can’t bring himself to write anything more on the Class Nine page and he’s spending a lot of time looking at it. He’s driving himself crazy; he’s going to tear off his own head. He needs a new project.

One presents itself to him early morning during a lull in action. Ray dragged everyone over to the dusty table that they don’t use (because who eats at a table, honestly) and said that they were going to sit down and work out finances _right this minute_ because if they left it any longer the pile of bills was going to become sentient and attack them for being such negligent fathers and so Egon finds himself sorting through envelopes and doing his best to understand the miniscule print. They’re all hopeless at anything that could be learned in a good home ec class, which was bad in college and even worse now that they spend their time running around stalking ghosts and doing dangerous things for the sake of science.

Peter slaps a folded piece of paper on the table. “I swear, one of these days we’ll get a full salary that doesn’t have a chunk out of it for damage costs.”

“Dream on, man,” Winston says. He closes his eyes and rubs them.

“It’s sort of what’s bound to happen when you bring four nuclear reactors into a building and shoot them at a moving target,” Ray reasons. “And they’re never too terrible.”

Peter snorts. “Yeah, cause we threaten to release the ghost again.”

Well, it worked the first time, and the Ghostbusters operate heavily under the premise of “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.”

“I wonder . . .” Egon pulls out a pen and starts to sketch on the back of an envelope. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees his teammates share a glance.

“Uh-uh,” Peter says, snatching the paper from him. The sudden movement leaves a long line cutting across the rough draft and sweeping to the edge. “No getting out of this. Put your giant brain to something useful.”

“That is useful,” Egon protests. If he could calibrate the streams with the level of consciousness required to . . . he would need a lot more tests, but it’s doable.

“I don’t think the Bank of America would agree,” Ray says. “Come on, man. Be a prodigy on your own time.”

Egon begrudgingly relents and focuses on finishing his stack. He loves math, but this is something else entirely. He always struggled to stay on-task with things like this, things that have no tangible use. Taxes are theoretical.

He’s second to finish his stack (Winston is the first) and he disappears up into his lab as soon as the pen hits the table. He crouches below the window and pulls out one of his books- a nice one with a red cover, not the one he knows he should stop looking at- and starts the sketch again. It would have to function exactly like a proton gun, except with added capabilities- if the new equations throw off the balance, he’s in for a long night.

Still, they need this. They’ve been talking about modifying the proton packs to only harm ghosts for ages, ever since they accidentally put a man in the hospital.

(He was okay, but still, those hours staring at the hospital floor through twisted fingers were some of the longest of Egon's life.)

He doesn’t often play music while he works, but he’s feeling inspired so he messes with the antennae of the old radio on the windowsill until someone’s crooning voice cuts through the heat of the lab. He settles down next to one of the many tables and opens his notes on the proton beams. He has his work cut out for him.

* * *

 

It takes a few months of near-obsessive work for the weapon to be perfected.

Well. Almost perfected. He generally marks something as “perfected” when it won’t explode if he touches it. It meets that requirement for sure.

Once it does, he lugs it downstairs. He’s just rounding the corner to the appropriate testing location when Ray yells, “Don’t come out yet!” and starts an off-rhythm drumroll on the sidewalk.

Egon waits for it to reach something resembling a crescendo before stepping out into the sunlight. Winston whoops when he sees the machine which honestly looks exactly like a regular proton gun except it’s spray-painted silver. Egon’s calling it the Molecular Dispatch Unit 2.0.

“So,” Peter says. “To recap, it’s a machine that kills ghosts and only ghosts.”

Egon coughs, pushing his glasses farther up the bridge of his nose. “Theoretically, yes.”

“So no more near misses with cats?” Ray asks.

“Cats look damn like ghosts,” Winston reasons. “It’s the eyes.”

“Right,” Egon says. “The feline population of New York City is now much safer.”

Ray laughs and claps him on the back. “Good man.”

Since Peter’s birthday was most recent, he gets to test the Molecular Dispatch Unit 2.0 first. He tilts it back, flicks off the safety, takes a deep breath, and hollers, “Fire it up!”

Why they all consistently require one-liners to test new machinery Egon will never know.

The blast comes in a stream of hot, jagged lightning. It’s beautiful. There’s something raw and natural about it that Egon can’t quite explain.

And then Peter loses control.

In retrospect, it’s probably Egon’s fault. Of course he should have mentioned that, with the extra components added to the beam, it would act a little differently than a typical proton pack. He should have done more to prepare his teammates.

It bounces off a few different surfaces and Egon honestly doesn’t even notice the direction it’s headed at first. He quietly notes how it doesn’t appear to be damaging the brick at all, and then he thinks that he should adjust it so that the beam doesn’t bounce like that, it would be safer if it dissipated once it hit something that isn’t a ghost, and then he thinks that Peter’s doing a good job staying calm.

And then he doesn’t think anything at all.

The pain’s barely noticeable at first, but it takes approximately five point five seconds to tear through his entire body and leave him keeled on the asphalt. It’s been a long time since he’s experienced any form of pain and oh God, he’s dying again, he has to be, there’s no way he can still be here with how much it hurts.

Tears spring at the corners of his eyes as he grasps for his hair, desperate for anything to keep him grounded. He can distantly hear someone screaming, “Turn it off, turn it OFF!” and someone else crying but it might be him, it’s probably him. The alley blurs into a long, white hallway and hundreds of spirits looking at him with pity as he tears into himself, folded over and gasping for breath that isn’t coming.

He’ll never bust a ghost again if that’s what it feels like.

The pain dies gradually, and he’s curled in the alley, sobbing into his sleeves. He can see the blood on his fingers that he could never wash off, tinging everything pinkish. He can see the knife waiting for him, just out of reach. Death is like an aftertaste that he’ll never be able to wash out of his mouth, a tattoo that will eventually wrap around his throat and suffocate him.

Peter’s crying too, kneeling next to him. “Egon,” he says. “Egon, oh Christ, can you hear me?”

 _I’m fine, Peter._ His hands are shaking so bad that they knock against the stone, a tinny overture. Peter grabs one of them and squeezes it. Egon squeezes back.

“I’m so sorry,” Peter says. His voice is choked. “I’m so sorry, man.”

Egon inhales slowly. “Not your fault,” he manages. “Faulty machinery.”

And there is something cold at the nape of his neck and oh- oh. Fingers, two fingers, checking the pulse he doesn’t have.

Ray looks up, terrified. “Egon-,”

“I know,” Egon interrupts him. “I- I know.”

Silence, blissful silence. The sky looks so pretty from here, smooth gray like pearls.

Egon always liked infinite things.

Winston breaks it. His voice is quieter than Egon’s ever heard. “How long have you been dead?”

There. It's out. The words hang in the air, heavy. They taste like soot.

Egon closes his eyes. He’s so tired of this charade. Tired of lying on the bare bones of his mattress, trying to even out his breathing. Tired of falling through walls when he leans against them.

Tired of the damn notebook page waiting to be filled.

“A couple months,” he says. “Since the Class Seven in the cellar.”

He waits for someone to ask the million-dollar question, _what are you,_ but they don’t.

“So it was your blood, then?” Ray asks.

Egon lifts his shirt gently. His eyes are still closed, but he can hear their gasps. He knows that the blood still looks wet, like the skin was broken minutes ago.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He isn’t really a person, nor is he anything else. He’s some in-between thing. The shadow of a doorframe. Rest stops at three in the morning and every liminal space they’ve ever been in.

“Don’t apologize,” Peter says automatically. “It’s- you’re okay.”

Egon smiles weakly. “I am,” he agrees. It’s the closest he’s come to meaning it.

Peter stretches out and lies beside him, staring up into the sky. “What was it like?” he says and there’s something almost conversational about it.

A sharp wind picks up. Egon welcomes it. “It hurt a lot,” he says.

After some hesitation, Ray and Winston join them in companionable silence. The four of them spiral outwards from some invisible spot. Egon’s hands aren’t quite so cold anymore.

Ray coughs slightly. “So,” he says, “I guess we were all, uh . . . dead wrong about you.”

Winston throws him an exasperated look over Egon’s head. “Ray, I don’t think-,”

Laughter scrapes up from the base of Egon’s throat, surprising him, but once he starts, he can’t stop. It bubbles out from between his fingers and into the still, cold air. It infects everything around him and God, he really is going to be okay, isn’t he? He’s going to be okay.

“Come on,” Peter says. “That’s what set you off? I can do so much better.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Ray says defensively.

“You asked for it.” Peter makes a big deal of rolling up his sleeves and Egon _cannot stop laughing._ “It’s really knife that we know this now, Egon.”

“Weak!” Ray calls.

“At least we don’t have to barium,” Winston says. “’Cause, you know . . . he’s a chemist.”

“I’m really more of a mechanical engineer,” Egon says but he doesn’t mind.

“So this is what it takes to turn you spiritual?” Ray says. “Sorry, I had to casket.”

“Thank you,” Egon says sincerely. “Thank you all so much.”

Peter grins down at him. “Of course,”

he says. “You’re doing a very good job keeping my spirits up,” he finishes, and Ray laughs so hard he curls in on himself.

Egon pulls himself up and leans against the wall. It stays solid under his weight, and he smiles.

There is blood on his side and fingertips. His breaths are stuck in some cold suspension, left without an exhale. There is a notebook page in his lab upstairs, waiting to be filled.

There is life all around him, and he swears that he can feel the ghost of a heartbeat.


End file.
